Not very SMART

When voters in Marin and Sonoma counties (just north of San Francisco) approved a $700 million transportation sales tax measure, they were promised “modern, sleek, 21st century” trains.

In fact, trains would look something like this:

This is the “heavy” (FRA-compliant) DMU made by Coloardo Railcar. If that company had not gone bankrupt late last year, SMART almost certainly would have gone with this vehicle.

To put in perspective, a here is a photo of a standard class 644 “Talent” as used all over Europe:

Besides looking like a “modern” train (the Talent 644 is more than 10 years old now), the performance characteristics of a modern DMU are far better compared to the heavy Amtrak-style trains favored by SMART. Because the European DMUs are light-weight, they have far better acceleration and braking — which allows for better dwell time at stations. More importantly, they have fuel economy that is 35%-100% better, meaning that for the same operating cost SMART could run a LOT more service.

What’s really going on here is a classic case of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome (also known as Buy America policies). Rather than adopt industry best-practice and purchase the best off-the-shelf rail vehicle the market has to offer, SMART instead has defined its procurement requirements such that only a domestic manufacturer can comply.

Since no other rail transit agency on the planet is interested in running archaic, heavy, Amtrak trains, and since the only manufacturer of those types of trains is now bankrupt, SMART has decided to design its own trains from scratch.

Designing a new rail vehicle is a major undertaking. Given SMART’s minuscule budget and staffing resources, this task is way beyond the agency’s skill level. In many ways, this is a repeat of Acela fiasco, when Amtrak also tried to design a new train (a tilting high-speed train no less). As in the case of Acela, we can expect SMART to produce a train that is unreliable, heavy, slow — and years late to get up and running.

[…] were to follow industry best-practice, they still may have no choice but to rely on racks. With its ill-advised decision to run heavy DMUs, the FRA is going to require bikes to be strapped into racks, which could limit how many bikes will […]

1. Amtrak didn’t design the Acela. It was designed and built by Alstom / Bombardier. It was financed by the Canadian government, who decided that it was cheaper to pay Amtrak to buy the trains than pay the shop forces at Bombardier’s plant in Canada unemployment benefits.

Amtrak actually looked at quite a number of different trains for use on the Northeast Corridor. This included some test runs of Talgo equipment as well as Sweden’s X2000. However, the Acela was the only one that came with its own financing.

Since Amtrak is always short of money, naturally the train with the financing package was what won out.

2. Beyond the NIH problem, the biggest reason why transit agencies here are forced into buying heavy, expensive, unique trains is that the Federal Railroad Administration has unique “safety” requirements that dictate that such heavy trains be used here. Austin, Texas purchased “off the shelf” DMUs for their service, and the FRA put them through almost a year and a half worth of delays because they didn’t want European trains operating here – they determined it was a “safety problem”. Even today, with Austin being allowed to operate its trains (finally!), they are not allowed to operate above 60 mph, and they are not allowed to intermix with standard railroad equipment. This has resulted in some fairly restrictive operations there. It has also resulted in some fairly restrictive operations on the New Jersey Transit RiverLINE, which also uses “Off the Shelf” DMU equipment.

3. Dwell time at stations doesn’t have much to do with acceleration and braking. It allows for overall higher average speed, but only slightly, depending on station spacing. The most important thing is properly sized doors, platforms, door-platform interfaces, and procedures that allow for good passenger flow. Boarding a train with stairs at each door is quite a bit slower than floor level platforms.

4. The fuel expense is only one part of the equation. One of the problems with operating trains in the USA is that there are crew requirements. In places where Europe would allow one crew member, here two or three are required. Here, you are only allowed one crew member if you are operating a subway or light rail line, or if you have a freight train. If you have a passenger train, you must have at least two crew members.